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WE BLACK WOMEN SAY: WE ARE HERE WITH YOU, THE DIGNIFIED PEOPLES OF BUENAVENTURA

We are enormously proud of the resistance and bravery of the peoples of Buenaventura. We are proud of their peaceful action, their strong collective actions, and their willingness to overcome the provocations and violence on their bodies by the State and specifically the ESMAD anti-riot police. We – the Black Women of Northern Cauca and Cali – are declaring a permanent assembly with this action because we are one people (#SomosUnSoloPueblo).

Beginning on the afternoon of Friday, June 2, 2017, we occupied the offices of the Human Rights Ombudsman in Cali with the accompaniment of black youth that self-identify as the Maroon Guard (Guardia Cimarrona).

We came here because we feel the injustice, racism and disdain for black people by the Colombian State, which has manifested clearly during these last 19 days in the city of Buenaventura.

Throughout the civic strike in Buenaventura, we saw how the entities – whose constitutional obligation is to defend and respect the rights of Colombian citizens – have not fulfilled this mandate. The actions that they say they have carried out have not concluded in effective results because the police continue to use violence against a people who are protesting peacefully. The absence of statements and alerts about the humanitarian crisis in Buenaventura should be understood as complicit silence.

Therefore:

Given the critical nature of the situation, we demand that the National Human Rights Ombudsman, Dr. Carlos Negret, go to Buenaventura and remain there until the aggressions against the population cease.

We demand the immediate demilitarization of the territory of Buenaventura.

We demand that the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman send the Civic Strike Committee and national government an effective plan for accompaniment that corresponds with the situation in Buenaventura and identify a plan for action after the end of the strike.

We demand a public statement by the national government guaranteeing a protection for the citizens of Buenaventura in the context of the civic strike that solicits an immediate end to excessive use of force against the community that feels attacked as if it were an armed actor.

We demand the immediate demilitarization of the territory of Buenaventura.

We demand that the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman issue a detailed report on the violations of human rights and international humanitarian law against the people of Buenaventura during the 19 days of the civic strike, which shows the state of the investigations into these acts and demonstrates what the reparations should be for the people whose physical integrity was affected by the aggressions.

We solicit a report on the number of people sentenced or incarcerated in the context of the strike, the state of their cases, and the advances in securing their legal assistance. The report should specify what kind of assistance they received.

We demand that the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman act in good faith as a guarantor of the constitutional rights of the people of Buenaventura with the hope that your dialogue with the national government will expose the grave violations of human, ethnic, and collective rights. We hope that the national government will reevaluate the illegality of its response to a peaceful mobilization as if it was a war thereby violating the right to peaceful social protest and other related rights.

We demand that the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman take the public actions necessary to secure the rights of the black people of Buenaventura.

We demand that the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman conduct a press conference with national and local media that covers the humanitarian crisis that affects Buenaventura by providing truthful information about it.

WE ARE FOR BUENAVENTURA!
THE PEOPLE WILL NEVER GIVE UP, NO!
FOR BUENAVENTURA!
THE PEOPLE WILL NEVER GIVE UP, NO!

Permanent Assembly of Black Women in the Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman in Cali

“I know you’re fighting a just cause…We go all round the country and we see people fighting just causes all the time…But this is our job…our role here is to attack, so that’s what we do.”

These were the words my friend was told when he engaged in conversation the other night with an agent of the ESMAD (Mobile Anti-Disturbances Squadron) on the streets of Buenaventura, Colombia, in the context of the ongoing civic strike.

The mainly Afro-descendant and indigenous community of Buenaventura on the Pacific Coast of Colombia has been on a civic strike now for 16 days. 16 days in which business, banks, shops and schools have been closed down and taxis and buses have stopped working to demand that the national government fulfils is basic human rights obligations to its citizens.

The demands of the strike are clear. Due to the desperate human rights situation which the community faces in Buenaventura, the Strike Committee called for the National Government to adopt a State of Social, Economic and Ecological Emergency in accordance with article 215 of the 1991 Colombian Constitution. This declaration would commit the government to providing within 30 days (90 days with extension) sufficient funds to address urgent issues in the city; basic and fundamental human rights which are seriously lacking, such as clean drinking water, a hospital with tertiary level health care, adequate sewage systems, quality and culturally relevant education institutions, and reparations for victims of violence, conflict and injustice. The Civic Strike Committee has been in and out of talks with the government for two weeks and the government has so far refused to meet the demands of the strikers.

Meanwhile day after day up to 200,000 strikers have taken to the streets marching or congregating in collective meeting points along the main Avenida 6o (6th Avenue) and the Via Alterna Interna (ring road) which both lead from the outskirts of Buenaventura to the city centre, and Colombia’s most important international port. The strikers protest the injustice of neoliberal economic policies which leave a city of over 500,000 people without basic public services, infrastructure and human rights, while the profits from tens of billions of dollars of imports and exports each year line the pockets of private owners.

The meeting points, consisting of open-air tents and sound systems, in which strikers peacefully resist this economic model, though cultural traditions of music, singing, dancing, storytelling, banging pots and pans and chanting for basic human rights, have a another function; preventing the cargo trucks, from entering and leaving the city. This is a historical and monumental form of resistance, not only to Colombia’s economic model, but to the wider global economic system, as a small group of determined protestors block one of the most strategic international ports for trade between Latin America and Asia. The response from the state has been has been violent, brutal and repressive.

Since the 19th March the ESDMAD have been present in the city, and backed up by the police, military and undercover police operations, has rained down on strikers firing not only tear gas but on several occasions fire arms. Tear gas has repeatedly been fired at residential areas and in particular into the most vulnerable communities where it easily enters into Buenaventura’s traditional casas de palafitos (wooden houses on stilts) causing asphyxiation for babies and young children, many of whom have been rushed to the clinic on the backs of motorbikes in the early house of the mornings. Night after night the ESMAD has torn down meeting points to make way for the cargo trucks that enter and leave the city just before dawn.

Last night was a particularly bad night. We arrived at the Sabrosuras meeting point in ElDorado barrio shortly before midnight after reports of earlier attacks by the ESMAD. As we arrived we were greeted by at least 150 strikers, men, women, and children, chatting, drinking coffee, singing along to music. All was quiet for a couple of hours, but then at around 2 a.m. we got news from a meeting point further along the road that the ESMAD were on their way back.

Groups of young strikers prepared to defend themselves and the meeting point, committed to preventing the trucks from passing. They strengthen the makeshift road blocks of tree branches, tires and planks of wood, and set up shields made from billboards several hundred metres from the official meeting point were people of all ages were still gathered. From our vantage point we could see the public security forces slowly advancing, first a battering tank to take out the road blocks, then an ESMAD tank followed by ESMAD agents on foot, and behind them several policemen on motorbikes and more tanks, trucks and cars. It felt like an army had been sent to overpower a couple of hundred unarmed protestors, with nothing but stones for self-defence.

The first encounter was brief, the battering tank took out the road blocks in a matter of seconds and the ESMAD began firing tear gas scattering the protestors into the nearby streets. The convoy thundered on, creaking and moaning under the weight of so metal armour, easily reaching and passing the tents of the meeting point. For a short time after they passed and continued down the road there was relative silence as protestors wearily made their way back to the main road. Then more ESMAD trucks and agents arrived and a two-hour confrontation ensued between ESMAD and a hundred or so mainly young people.

When the attack finally calmed down, the dust settled and most of the protestors had been scattered the cavalry arrived. The raison d’être for all this violence. First an ESMAD tank, then police cars, then a line of 20 or so police on bikes ceremoniously ushered a procession of no less than 50 cargo trucks into the city. One after one the trucks thundered by as outraged bystanders shouted angrily at the drivers and ESMAD agents point blank shot tear gas at anyone who looked like they might try to stop the neoliberal caravan of profit as it made its way to the port.

The ESMAD hung around well after the trucks had passed through, still shooting the odd tear gas canister, revealing their immaturity as they hid behind walls, clearly enjoying playing at war while the city’s residents walked the streets attempting to go about their morning activities in peace. Except it wasn’t a game and the scene really resembled one of occupation and war. When the ESMAD finally moved out strikers and bystanders gathered on the sidewalks to mockingly cheer and clap the national heroes. The agents responded with equal scorn, taunting the crowds, laughing and putting their thumbs in the air.

The confrontations at El Dorado and Independencia barrios didn’t end there, they continued well into the morning, even as the Civic Strike Committee organised and planned for the day’s cultural activity, a march from El Dorado and other meeting towards the Isla de la Paz barrio located near the Via Alterna Interna.

Yes. Last night was a particularly bad night. There were numerous injuries from tear gas and a further six fire arms injuries confirmed so far. Evidence was gathered and shared by strikers of empty tear gas canisters, bullets from army rifles, photos of armed, plain clothed officers in the crowds and videos of the ESMAD advancing and firing tear gas at the unarmed strikers and at the houses in the nearby streets. The voice of one young woman carried across the wind as she called from a balcony in a building engulfed with tear gas a few streets away, repeating over and over “murderers, murderers, you are killing us, murderers.”

As the strikes entered their 16th day in Buenaventura, and the Committee prepared for the arrival of government ministers this morning to present their reformed demands, the call they have been making for weeks for the government to remove the ESMAD forces and end the violence on the streets and in the communities of Buenaventura resonated more strongly than ever. For how can we negotiate agreements in the middle of a war? The continued presence of the ESMAD, who in their own words, are here to “attack,” has made it impossible to negotiate a truly peaceful end to the strike, and demonstrates that the government has little intention of respecting the demands and rights of the community and is farm more concerned about protecting the private interests of the port. Nevertheless, in the face of an indifferent government the people of Buenaventura have stayed strong and committed to this people-centred human rights and political process. As the dialogues commenced in the afternoon of the 16th day, the community of Buenaventura continued to assert their right to march, strike and protest in the streets, to demand their fundamental human rights and to chant day after day and night after night that “el pueblo no se rinde carajo!” the people won’t give up!

“I know you’re fighting a just cause…We go all round the country and we see people fighting just causes all the time…But this is our job…our role here is to attack, so that’s what we do.”

These were the words my friend was told when he engaged in conversation the other night with an agent of the ESMAD (Mobile Anti-Disturbances Squadron) on the streets of Buenaventura, Colombia, in the context of the ongoing civic strike.

The mainly Afro-descendant and indigenous community of Buenaventura on the Pacific Coast of Colombia has been on a civic strike now for 16 days. 16 days in which business, banks, shops and schools have been closed down and taxis and buses have stopped working to demand that the national government fulfils is basic human rights obligations to its citizens.

The demands of the strike are clear. Due to the desperate human rights situation which the community faces in Buenaventura, the Strike Committee called for the National Government to adopt a State of Social, Economic and Ecological Emergency in accordance with article 215 of the 1991 Colombian Constitution. This declaration would commit the government to providing within 30 days (90 days with extension) sufficient funds to address urgent issues in the city; basic and fundamental human rights which are seriously lacking, such as clean drinking water, a hospital with tertiary level health care, adequate sewage systems, quality and culturally relevant education institutions, and reparations for victims of violence, conflict and injustice. The Civic Strike Committee has been in and out of talks with the government for two weeks and the government has so far refused to meet the demands of the strikers.

Meanwhile day after day up to 200,000 strikers have taken to the streets marching or congregating in collective meeting points along the main Avenida 6o (6th Avenue) and the Via Alterna Interna (ring road) which both lead from the outskirts of Buenaventura to the city centre, and Colombia’s most important international port. The strikers protest the injustice of neoliberal economic policies which leave a city of over 500,000 people without basic public services, infrastructure and human rights, while the profits from tens of billions of dollars of imports and exports each year line the pockets of private owners.

The meeting points, consisting of open-air tents and sound systems, in which strikers peacefully resist this economic model, though cultural traditions of music, singing, dancing, storytelling, banging pots and pans and chanting for basic human rights, have a another function; preventing the cargo trucks, from entering and leaving the city. This is a historical and monumental form of resistance, not only to Colombia’s economic model, but to the wider global economic system, as a small group of determined protestors block one of the most strategic international ports for trade between Latin America and Asia. The response from the state has been has been violent, brutal and repressive.

Since the 19th March the ESDMAD have been present in the city, and backed up by the police, military and undercover police operations, has rained down on strikers firing not only tear gas but on several occasions fire arms. Tear gas has repeatedly been fired at residential areas and in particular into the most vulnerable communities where it easily enters into Buenaventura’s traditional casas de palafitos (wooden houses on stilts) causing asphyxiation for babies and young children, many of whom have been rushed to the clinic on the backs of motorbikes in the early house of the mornings. Night after night the ESMAD has torn down meeting points to make way for the cargo trucks that enter and leave the city just before dawn.

Last night was a particularly bad night. We arrived at the Sabrosuras meeting point in ElDorado barrio shortly before midnight after reports of earlier attacks by the ESMAD. As we arrived we were greeted by at least 150 strikers, men, women, and children, chatting, drinking coffee, singing along to music. All was quiet for a couple of hours, but then at around 2 a.m. we got news from a meeting point further along the road that the ESMAD were on their way back.

Groups of young strikers prepared to defend themselves and the meeting point, committed to preventing the trucks from passing. They strengthen the makeshift road blocks of tree branches, tires and planks of wood, and set up shields made from billboards several hundred metres from the official meeting point were people of all ages were still gathered. From our vantage point we could see the public security forces slowly advancing, first a battering tank to take out the road blocks, then an ESMAD tank followed by ESMAD agents on foot, and behind them several policemen on motorbikes and more tanks, trucks and cars. It felt like an army had been sent to overpower a couple of hundred unarmed protestors, with nothing but stones for self-defence.

The first encounter was brief, the battering tank took out the road blocks in a matter of seconds and the ESMAD began firing tear gas scattering the protestors into the nearby streets. The convoy thundered on, creaking and moaning under the weight of so metal armour, easily reaching and passing the tents of the meeting point. For a short time after they passed and continued down the road there was relative silence as protestors wearily made their way back to the main road. Then more ESMAD trucks and agents arrived and a two-hour confrontation ensued between ESMAD and a hundred or so mainly young people.

When the attack finally calmed down, the dust settled and most of the protestors had been scattered the cavalry arrived. The raison d’être for all this violence. First an ESMAD tank, then police cars, then a line of 20 or so police on bikes ceremoniously ushered a procession of no less than 50 cargo trucks into the city. One after one the trucks thundered by as outraged bystanders shouted angrily at the drivers and ESMAD agents point blank shot tear gas at anyone who looked like they might try to stop the neoliberal caravan of profit as it made its way to the port.

The ESMAD hung around well after the trucks had passed through, still shooting the odd tear gas canister, revealing their immaturity as they hid behind walls, clearly enjoying playing at war while the city’s residents walked the streets attempting to go about their morning activities in peace. Except it wasn’t a game and the scene really resembled one of occupation and war. When the ESMAD finally moved out strikers and bystanders gathered on the sidewalks to mockingly cheer and clap the national heroes. The agents responded with equal scorn, taunting the crowds, laughing and putting their thumbs in the air.

The confrontations at El Dorado and Independencia barrios didn’t end there, they continued well into the morning, even as the Civic Strike Committee organised and planned for the day’s cultural activity, a march from El Dorado and other meeting towards the Isla de la Paz barrio located near the Via Alterna Interna.

Yes. Last night was a particularly bad night. There were numerous injuries from tear gas and a further six fire arms injuries confirmed so far. Evidence was gathered and shared by strikers of empty tear gas canisters, bullets from army rifles, photos of armed, plain clothed officers in the crowds and videos of the ESMAD advancing and firing tear gas at the unarmed strikers and at the houses in the nearby streets. The voice of one young woman carried across the wind as she called from a balcony in a building engulfed with tear gas a few streets away, repeating over and over “murderers, murderers, you are killing us, murderers.”

As the strikes entered their 16th day in Buenaventura, and the Committee prepared for the arrival of government ministers this morning to present their reformed demands, the call they have been making for weeks for the government to remove the ESMAD forces and end the violence on the streets and in the communities of Buenaventura resonated more strongly than ever. For how can we negotiate agreements in the middle of a war? The continued presence of the ESMAD, who in their own words, are here to “attack,” has made it impossible to negotiate a truly peaceful end to the strike, and demonstrates that the government has little intention of respecting the demands and rights of the community and is farm more concerned about protecting the private interests of the port. Nevertheless, in the face of an indifferent government the people of Buenaventura have stayed strong and committed to this people-centred human rights and political process. As the dialogues commenced in the afternoon of the 16th day, the community of Buenaventura continued to assert their right to march, strike and protest in the streets, to demand their fundamental human rights and to chant day after day and night after night that “el pueblo no se rinde carajo!” the people won’t give up!

People centered human rights (Baraka, 2013) are those rights which emerge from locally grounded struggles against the multiple forms of oppression in the global capitalist world. Through People centered human rights (PCHR) processes oppressed peoples define the content and meaning of their rights as they demand structural transformation, justice and the dismantling of neo-colonial relations of domination. The Afro-descendant and indigenous communities of Buenaventura and Chocó in Colombia’s pacific coast are doing just this as they uphold an ongoing civic strike has been in place since mid-May.

Why are the people of Buenaventura striking?

The mainly Afro-descendant and indigenous region of Buenaventura and the wider Pacific region of Colombia are rich in natural resources and biodiversity yet have some of the highest rates of poverty, unemployment and lack of basic services such education and health in the country. Throughout the region, largescale mining and other neoliberal development projects threaten the very existence of communities and their ancestral lands, polluting rivers with mercury, destroying traditional livelihoods and displacing whole communities. The UN has reported that over 50% of the 78,839 hectares of land which suffers the impact of mining exploitation in Colombia is located in the Pacific region. While private business profits from the region’s resources, the national government has long neglected to invest in infrastructure to guarantee the basic rights of the population.

The city of Buenaventura itself with a population of just over 400,000 people is home to the country’s most important international port, through which last year alone over 15,000,000 tons of cargo was imported and exported. Since the port was privatized in 1991, the vast majority of income generated goes straight into the pockets of private business owners from outside of the city, while the community suffers from a lack of investment and neglect. 64% of the population lives in poverty and 9.1% in extreme poverty. The child mortality rate in Buenaventura is 27.6 per 1000. The sewage system covers only 60% of the city, and only 76% receives running water. For most of the population that water arrives in homes for only a few hours a day and in some communities only a couple of times a week. The city’s public hospital was closed in 2015 leaving the population with access only to primary health care and meaning that patients often have to travel to other cities to receive adequate medical attention. Only 22% of the population have access to secondary education, and schools not only lack materials and infrastructure but resources to provide a culturally relevant education. The privatisation of the port contributed to a rise in unemployment as many of the jobs were given outsiders leaving an unemployment rate today of 62%. Much of the working population are engaged in informal labour, with lack of job security and safe working conditions.[1]

Over the past few years and in the context of economic plans to increase Colombia’s access to international trade, there have been several development projects to expand the capacity and infrastructure of port, including the construction of new terminals such TCBuen (Buenaventura Container Terminal) located near the communities of Inmaculada and Santa Fe on the mainland of Buenaventura. These projects have meant widespread human rights violations for the traditional fishing communities living on the sea front. Numerous families have been displaced to make way for new container parks, constructions have restricted freedom of movement and access to the coast and creeks where people fish, dragging of the sea bed to enable large container ships to dock is destroying the ecosystem contained in one of the worlds largest mangrove forests, and the 24 hour heavy activities of the container parks have led to the collapsing of houses and health problems among residents. Locally based organisations such as Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) have reported that violence, including massacres rose dramatically in the barrios nearest to the port expansion sites shortly before the construction began, leading to the displacement of many residents. It is widely believed that the violence was a deliberate strategy to spread terror and make it easier for the company to buy up houses cheaply and push the community out.

People-centred human rights in Buenaventura

The people Buenaventura are therefore well aware that the human rights violations they face are a direct result of the government’s neoliberal economic model based on continuous growth, extractive industries and private profit and underpinned by structural racism that denies the humanity of black and indigenous lives in the name of profit. In the face of these threats, and as part of a the wider Afro-descendant struggle for territorial and cultural rights in Colombia, the community of Buenaventura has been engaging in processes of resistance that can only be described as people centred human rights. Through participatory processes, community education, and mobilisations communities are reframing human rights in their own languages, rooting demands in local experiences and challenging structural racism and neoliberal oppression. The community calls for basic rights to health, education, water and justice but central to their struggle is the right to territory; defined as the vital space in which they exist, live and maintain ancestral livelihoods and traditional cultural practices. Only through the realisation of the collective right to territory can they exercise the rights to be, to live their identities as members of the Afro-descendant people, and to autonomy and political participation. For this community territory is life and life must not be sold for profit.

The civic strike as PCHR

The civic strike is the most recent action in this long struggle for rights in Buenaventura, and the demands being made of the government bring together these locally defined ethno-territorial rights, rooted in the urgent situation facing the communities. The central demand of the strike is for the national government to declare a “state of social, economic and ecological emergency” in the city in accordance with article 215 of the 1991 Colombian Constitution. This declaration, the Civic Strike Committee argues, would committee the government to allocate resources in order address eight key issues as a matter of priority:

Low, medium and high level health service provision, coverage, prevention and assistance and traditional medicine;

Recovery and conservation of degraded water basins and other strategic ecosystems;

Coverage, quality and relevance of basic, technical and university education;

Strengthening and mass promotion of cultural practices, sports and recreation;

Basic sanitation and infrastructure and public and community operation of public utilities;

Access to justice and reparations for individual and collective victims;

Territorial order in terms of the life and collective well-being with repair for the Buenaventura family;

Strengthen local and regional production and other political, legal and economic measures to ensure the generation of decent employment and income required by the family.

Over 11 days, while shops and business remained closed hundreds of thousands of members of the community have blocked the 6th Avenue, and Via Alterna main roads in and out of the port and city centre, marched in the streets, and taken part in a parade of boats in the waters surrounding the port, to peacefully call for a response from the national government to demands to guarantee their rights. In the face of violent repression and tear gas attacks by the ESMAD (Mobile Anti-Disturbances Squadron), state imposed curfews, and helicopters intimidating the community day and night from the skies, people of all ages have not given into fear and have continued to take to the streets every day, clear in their objectives, shouting their demands and joining the voices of the civic strike also taking place in the Department of Chocó in the northern Pacific region.

An initial round of talks between the Civic Strike Committee and a government delegation on the third day of the strike in Buenaventura were suspended when the government did not meet the call to send a high-ranking delegation of Ministers to the negotiating table. A second round of talks took place on the 23rd and 24th May with a government delegation led by the newly named Minister of the Interior, Gillermo Rivera. Talks broke off into autonomous spaces on the 25th to consider proposals and give time for the government to seek a decision on the declaration of a State of Emergency.

In a commendable display of transparency and people-centred politics the dialogues between the Strike Committee and the government were transmitted live via local television and the internet. Yet as residents sat at home, watching the talks each day, and into the nights, under curfew with the helicopters still circling above, and tear gas being fired into vulnerable communities, it became increasingly obvious that the government had no interest in meeting the demands of the strikers. Indeed as talks resumed on Friday 26th May, in the wake of a heavy night of attacks and arrests in the communities, the Minister confirmed that the state of emergency would not be declared. After several hours of discussion he left the table, leaving the dialogues to be suspended yet again and causing indignation and frustration among the Strike Committee and the community watching at home. As Strike Committee member Victor Hugo Vidal stated on Tuesday during the dialogues, if the government is unable to declare a state of emergency in Buenaventura then where else in the country could such a situation be declared?!

The situation in Buenaventura is urgent as everyone who lives here knows only too well. But thanks to ongoing resistance and PCHR process facilitated and supported by local organisations, local people are not only aware of the injustice of their situation, but are increasingly aware of their human rights and of the neoliberal economic structural context in which these rights are being violated. As such they are increasingly adding their voices to the collective demands for the realisation of their rights and for structural change for themselves and future generations. The energy, spirit and mass participation in the civic strikes over the past ten days is testimony to how this PCHR movement in Buenaventura has enabled a collective sense of ownership in locally grounded, transformative political processes, as strikers take to the streets to demand that the rights of the people must be prioritised over the private business interests of the port.

Strikers form a chain to block ESMAD from the march in symbolic resistance

Procession of boats heads out past the docks of the Port Society on Tuesday towards the Bay of the Cross amid chants of “el pueblo no se reinde carajo” (the people won’t give up) and “arrecha, arrecha, a rechazar, a todos los ladrones que vienen a robar” (…reject all the thieves that come to steal!)

As strikers make their way to the march on Sunday, ESMAD guards the local shopping centre which was looted last Friday night.

The National Afrocolombian Peace Council (CONPA) sends a greeting to the Colombian people, and in particular, a greeting of life, happiness, freedom to our sisters and brothers in resistance in the port city of Buenaventura and in the Choco region.

We thank the media present here for responding to our call, on the eve of the celebration of the Day of AfroColombianity, May 21.

The Black, Afrocolombian, Raizal and Palequero in Colombia are living through a historical and systematic situation of exclusion and racism, which, during these days, has developed into a humanitarian crisis and threatens our very existence. In April of this year, according to our communities, there have been new occurrences of mass displacement​, as well as forced confinements, which affect thousands of our families; new assassinations, disappearances, kidnappings and denunciations related to the reappearance of armed groups in the lower San Juan, upper Baudo and Rio Sucio, Carmen del Darien in the department of Choco, in Southern Bolivar, in rural and urban zones of Tumaco and in Northern Cauca, areas where this is a concentration of the FARC.

In the territories, we continue to find mutilated and tortured bodies, we continue to live through combat and armed harassment, threats, arbitrary detention, we suffer attacks and killings of community leaders, forced urban recruitment and recently we have been receiving threats against our sons and daughters, with the message that if they are found outside of the house after 6 in the evening, they will be raped and killed.

In face of this situation of secular neglect and incompliance of State obligations, lack of recognition for, as well as protection and advancement of our rights, and in the face of economic policies and megaprojects that are being imposed in our territories which continue being factors of plundering and impoverishment of our people, the civic strikes have been organized in the department of Choco and in the port of Buenaventura. These will continue into other areas in order to continue to call for the attention of the State.

The celebration of the Day of Afrocolombianity reminds us of the actions taken for enforcement of our rights, initiated by our ancestors, and which we continue to advance with strong will for the construction of peace.

Mister President Juan Manuel Santos, and representatives of Congress, as a way of advancing our rights, CONPA proposes:

To work with a Normative Framework that covers all issues and topics necessary for the implementation of the 29 agreements contained in the Ethnic Chapter, together with the peoples represented through the High Level Body created by the Ethnic Chapter of the Peace Accords

A guarantee for the establishment of a special fund for the implementation of the accords in Black territories and communities

A guarantee that the fundamental right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent will not be regulated via the fasttrack process.

Implementation of a route for participation, as agreed upon with the government within framework of the National, Campesina, Ethnic and Popular Minga and the strike in Choco, and which guarantees compliance with the agreements that are reached with the government with the Civic Strike of Buenaventura also related to the expedition, this coming 27 of August of 2017, the regulated decrees for Law 70 of 1993.

Formulation, in collaboration with the people, their authorities and organizations, of a specific and differentiated policy for the eradication and substitution of illicit crops that covers collective and ancestral territories of Ethnic Peoples.

Inclusion of San Basilio de Palenque in the Territory Focussed Development Plans (PDETs)

A guarantee of the conditions for the updating of the Integral and Long Term Development Plan for Black, Afrocolombian, Raizal and Palequero people, in a participatory way, and based on consultation, and that this is converted into the Plan for the Afrodescendent Decade, guaranteeing the resources assigned yet not implemented in the 2014-2017 plan are reintegrated and added to this current Plan.

A guarantee that in the High Level Body for Gender of the Peace Process, there is full participation of Indigenous and Afrodesdendent women, to guarantee a ethnic-racial gender perspective

That necessary measures are taken to ensure that the established institutional mechanisms, or those yet to be established, for the implementation of the peace accords, are based on consultation, guaranteeing the participation of ethnoterritorial Indigenous and Afrodescendent authorities, towards the compliance of its functions and protocols.

We would like to take this opportunity to make public the invitation, this 25 of May, Day for the Dignity of Victims of Sexual Violence, to participate in a symbolic act, where Afrodescendent women will make public 1000 cases of sexual violence against Afrodescendent women in the framework of the armed internal conflict, and to recognize the T-622 Court Decision of November 10, 2016, that recognizes the Atrato River as a subject of rights.

As Afrodescendent people, we are living a humanitarian crisis that threatens our very existence as peoples. The Civic Strikes in Choco and Buenaventura, and those that are to come, are a response to State neglect. If, within 30 days, there are no significant advances, we will seek out the international community and agencies that are following what is happening regarding peace in this country, peace which has become a reference point for the world.